what orlando is teaching me

I was born into an island nation that knows the pain of the pulling apart, and the standing against each other. The short version is that there are two major ethnic groups (there are others as well), Sinhalese (the majority) and Tamils (the largest minority). While most of the time, both groups co-existed peacefully, there have been pockets of violence, systems of discrimination and then an eruption of sadness beginning in 1983 that would continue as a civil war for over 20 years, and some would say the sadness continues today. The history of hate in Sri Lanka is thousands of years old and complex, and I am unqualified to write the details, but this is part of my story.

We are Tamils, and it was 1977 when a mob of Sinhalese people came down the street to my grandparents’ home and burned it to the ground. My father, 25 at the time, and his family escaped with the clothes on their back. In 1983 it was time for round two. Only my grandparents lived in the house they rebuilt after 1977, my grandfather fighting cancer in what would be the last weeks of his life. A mob burned their house down to the ground again. My mother, father and 17-month-old me lived in a different part of Colombo, and a mob came down our street. Our house and the one across the street were the only two Tamil houses on the road, and they were coming for one of us. We jumped over the back wall and hid in our neighbour’s house for three days.

By the end of that year, we were on a Korean Airlines flight the United States and the rest of my life would be spent as a missionary kid mostly in the Philippines and also in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

We didn’t talk much about the wounds of our racial history. We ate curry every now and then, but I grew up as a woman with no ethnic identity and with no understanding of the past other than these simple stories. I didn’t understand that there are more stories left untold, that the men and women who experience injustice need to know that their experiences matter.

We know within hours of shots firing that there are dead bodies in a nightclub in Orlando. We take it in from one side of a lit screen, tweets, images, reactions, reactions to reactions. It will only take a day for the soapboxes to come out, for fingers to be pointed at guns, at people, at theology, at public policy.

I’m guessing you have beliefs. I do, too. But after people are ripped from the earth through violence – in Sri Lanka, Syria, Falluja, Venezuela, and Orlando – I find little comfort in my opinions. I want to reach for the truth that I teach my sons every day when they hit each other with fists and cars and trains. He’s made in the image of God, all people are made in the image of God, you are never allowed to treat him that way.

We need connections created, restored, renewed, where people are not photos we scroll past on social media, but living, breathing, sitting at our table, eating in our homes, churches and communities. Our shoulders are touching theirs, we are asking questions, listening, sharing our lives, we are offering our presence. Our one life in this window of history. These kinds of tragedies don’t happen all the time, and our response says something about our heart.

Will it break? Will it move? Will the blood pulse through our veins, into our hands and feet and make us move in the direction of community and people?

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In my years of returning to Sri Lanka, we shared meals with Sinhalese Christians all the time, we still do. We were in their homes, we hugged their kids, on the vast majority of theological points, it is likely we agree, and in many ways it was like we were no different from each other. But never do I remember someone asking my parents, What was it like for you? What happened? I know we live in the same country, but what is it like to be here and be you?

It is easy to shy away from conversations about pain when it didn’t happen to you. We feign a lack of curiosity for the life that wasn’t ours, for the cost we did not pay.

It is not easy to reach for people whose lives are foreign to us. Our natural instincts will always be to surround ourselves with people who mirror to us a life we want to have or the life we have. It is easier this way, it requires nothing of us.

My little family of four has only been part of our community in Melbourne since December, and our calendar slowly fills with dinners, brunches and playdates. With people who believe what I do, with those who sound like us, where there is little translation required because we are speaking the same language and sharing similar experiences.

What am I telling myself? What am I suggesting to you?

Have dinner with a gay man. Invite a Muslim for dinner. Have a playdate with a family that does not resemble yours. Open your home to people who do not believe what you believe, share your food with a community you fear, let their children race through your home and make a mess in the playroom.

Not as a project, not to tick your outreach box. Just because you can.

Ask them questions. What does it look like to have your life? What did your family say when you came out to them? How do people treat you in the grocery store? What do you fear most? What makes you happy? What would you love to do when you retire? What do you do with your kids on the weekend? What are your traditions?

Listen. With your ears first, then with your heart. Resist the temptation to form an opinion when you hear the answer. Concentrate on the hearing, the absorbing, the receiving of their human heart. Let their stories sit sacred on the hallowed ground of shared humanity. Dare yourself to see the similarities.

Not your similarities of belief.

The similarities of life, the places where your humanity intersect with hers, the space of connection with his present.

These corners mean something.

You will carve it out one conversation at a time, one dinner at a time, one playdate at a time. The more your heart opens to let people in, the less interested you will become in winning arguments in part because you will see that winning arguments is not winning people’s hearts.

We keep ourselves from connection because we think it means giving up territory. We fancy ourselves as soldiers on some ideological frontline, guarding our boundary line, thinking that if it moves an inch, we have lost.

Winning and losing is the world’s idea, a system created to put us against each other, a scheme that keeps you buying more and padding your life with degrees, homes, clothes, work, communities, religions and people who will make you feel like a winner. Its promise is, Buy me, take this, believe me and I will keep you from losing.

Are we soldiers with a territory to lose or are we neighbors with people to love? Women and men, children and teens, babies and preschoolers cobbling a life together in a broken world, picking up the pieces of our own mistakes and failures of others, clay spinning on a wheel in the hand of a potter who is forming us, shaping us, creating a piece that will be unrecognisable to our eyes when he is finished.

We don’t get to decide what he will do with someone else’s life. We don’t get to decide what he will do with ours.

Making our table a place for all to gather and for all lives to be shared, acknowledged and honoured tells a better story: God is in charge. He is working his way through human hearts, he gets to decide how the clay spins, he picks where to smoothen out and where to stretch. He decides what needs to go and what needs to stay.

We get to open our homes and our hearts. We get to set the table, pass the peach cobbler, and raise our glasses. We get to bow our heads and pray, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done.

On earth.

As it is in heaven.

Now it’s your turn: How can you connect with someone outside your circle of comfort? What keeps you from doing it? Could you call or email someone today? What questions could you ask them?

Welcome to My Daily Bread & Butter, I’m Devi, it’s great to “meet” you. If you’re new here, this page will give you a bit more information about me and browse the archives to read more. I love to write about food, family and faith at the table; hopefully what you’ve read today was food for your mind and heart. I love to hear from readers, so comment away or email if you prefer. If you want to receive these posts straight to your inbox, just scroll to the very bottom and subscribe. I’m more active on Instagram, so follow me there if it’s your thing. And if this post resonated with you, there are a few others of its kind in The Table archives.

11 Responses to "what orlando is teaching me"

Wow, Devi, thank you for sharing this. It challenged me. I try not to think of myself as a soldier with a territory, but I definitely neglect my responsibility as a neighbor with people to love. I’ll be thinking about this post for a long time.

I’m glad to hear that, Marissa, thanks for taking the time to comment. It’s the people who are right around me (starting with the ones who live in my home :)) who are the easiest to overlook, I think. We are all in this together.

Yes, Shelby, I think I have the same response as a TCK in Australia. I really don’t think much about the fact that my life now is quite homogenous because my past was so diverse. Thanks for commenting.

His work in human hearts something that holds me steady during my own mundane parenting days :), and maybe that’s what opened my eyes to it in other people’s lives as well. Thanks for commenting, Adriel.

Devi, this is fabulous. So good and such wisdom in your words. my son has been surrounded by muslim friends at school, an education that has been priceless. we hosted a nigerian theological student to give our sermon on sunday. he lives in the city where boko haram began and he is going back to serve his people. It took everything in me to stop the tears from streaming down my face, the perspective i rec’d was humbling and convicting. i then i learned it was the first time in four years that someone of color was in the pulpit and well, that made me sad and provided more challenge. thank you for this beautiful piece of writing. xx

What an awesome experience for your son, Shelly, and for all of you. I’ve been reading the news from the UK for the past few weeks now, and it sounds like there are going to be many people who are wanting to share their stories and experiences. So much pain and division. I’m so glad this resonated with you my friend.

Very thoughtful write up Devi.
I grew up in the southern part of Nigeria when Muslims and Christians mostly live as good neighbors. There have been the occasional skirmish but they are very rare unlike in the northern part of the same country because of intolerance.

In my experience, most conversions are initiated through lifestyle evangelism. Often by building a relationship with one’s neighbor or colleague till their hearts are more receptive. This, I believe is the diminishing/missing factor as the years go by. When our lifestyles speak hate and not love.
God did not ask us to condone sins, in fact he commands the opposite. But He did not send us on a hate mission either.
I was recently honored to give a talk at a women’s conference where i did a study on Jesus’ chat with the Samaritan woman by the well. It was a real eye opener for me personally on how we are to relate to others who are not of the faith. Jesus first went to her at her convenience, then He sat to speak with her. Most of what He did was against the tradition of that time. But He got amazing results.
May God open our eyes and hearts in Jesus’ name.